Could You Pick Up Some Ribs?

Posted: June 19, 2009

NEW YORK CITY—"Hey, buddy, can you spare 26 tons of meat? I wanna have a barbecue block party." That's what Danny Meyer, president of Union Square Hospitality Group and a transplanted St. Louis barbecue aficionado, and Kenny Callaghan, executive chef/partner of USHG's Blue Smoke barbecue restaurant, said seven years ago, when they dreamed up the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, an annual bash that will take place June 13 to 14 this year in Madison Square Park. To Callaghan, former executive sous chef of Union Square Cafe turned pitmaster, fell the task of supply sergeant for the event.

Each of the 14 invited pitmasters showcases his specialty—Kansas City ribs, Texas-style beef brisket, pulled pork shoulder, whole hog, baby back ribs, and smoked sausage, plus all the fixin's—sauces, coleslaw, baked beans, hush puppies, cornbread, etc.—normally served in their home barbecue joints. It's Callaghan's responsibility to coordinate the shopping lists and source the necessary ingredients for the participants—several barbecue champions among them—some of whom will haul their barbecue rigs from as far as 2,000 miles away, if Callaghan can find enough food for them to cook.

In fact, Callaghan needs one hell of a lot of food for the pitmasters to cook, including 9,000 pounds of baby back ribs, 13,000 pounds of pork ribs, 12,000 pounds of pork butt, 3,000 pounds of ham, and 2,000 pounds of sausage. Aside from the pork essentials, there is the little matter of another 6,000 pounds of beef ribs and 5,000 pounds of beef brisket, along with 8,000 pounds of coleslaw, 4,000-plus pounds of baked beans, 12,000 hush puppies, about 40,000 pounds of hamburger buns, plus all the condiments—with the exception of the highly secretive barbecue sauces that each team brings themselves. The rest, drinks—including nearly 25,000 cups of beer, 7,000 cans of soda (a good ratio of beer-to-soda), 34,000 bottles of Snapple, and a cool 2,000 root beer floats—is a piece of cake, er, brownies (2,000). "They send me a shopping list, and I have a number of purveyors I work with," Callaghan says. After six years of hosting the event, he has learned that pulling this megaparty together keeps several people busy all year and several hundred busy the week of the event. He begins planning for each year's barbecue a week or so after the last one.

The one major item that Callaghan doesn't have to worry about is 32 whole hogs, which Ed Mitchell (The Pit, Raleigh, NC) hauls up in a reefer truck. "It's a labor of love," Mitchell says. "As an accepted New York hometown boy, I have to keep it real and do it just like down here. I'm into raising my own old-breed Duroc-Hampshire hogs, and everything I feed them is natural—acorns, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cabbages."

The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party began in 2002 as what Meyer and Callaghan thought would be a modest affair, then held on 27th Street in Manhattan in front of the newly opened Blue Smoke restaurant. "It rained 11 out of 12 hours that year," Callaghan remembers, "and nobody left! That's when we knew we were on to something."

The line that year for Mike (The Legend) Mills' 17th St. Bar & Grill's championship ribs wound around the block even in the downpour. As Mills recalls, "I thought those New Yorkers had a real problem. Surely they were suffering from barbecue deprivation."

From its modest beginnings the event has grown to attract some of the best pitmasters in the country serving authentic down-home barbecue to as many as 125,000 people and has become a major source of funding for the Madison Square Park Conservancy, raising more than $85,000 last year.

Callaghan says, "We may be in a bad economic period, but this has become the major food event in New York City, and it makes for a cheap, fun weekend." Food can be purchased for $8 a plate; drinks cost $2 to $6. For $100 a Fast Pass ticket (for two) allows access to express lines that permits purchasers to sample food from as many stands as their waistlines can tolerate. See www.bigapplebbq.org for details and a list of this year's pitmasters.